Finland has applied for 9.55 million euros ($11.3 million) in funding from the European Commission to reinforce its undersea cable repair capacity, the Finnish ministry of transport and communications said on Thursday.
The Baltic Sea region has been on high alert for sabotage after a string of outages of power cables, gas pipelines and telecoms fibre, and subsea infrastructure is also subject to technical malfunction and outages caused by accidents.
The project is coordinated by the Finnish National Emergency Supply Agency and involves partners from Finland, Sweden and Estonia, the ministry said.
The project aims to shorten repair times for subsea communications and energy cables in serious incidents in normal conditions and in emergency conditions.
It also aims to ensure repair capacity if the market fails to provide it or maritime traffic is restricted
The Finnish ministry said decisions on funding will be made in autumn 2026, referring to an indicative timeline from the European Commission.
(Reporting by Louise Rasmussen, editing by Terje Solsvik)